


Both Halves Together

by scioscribe



Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, First Vulcan Kiss, M/M, Tarsus IV, past trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2020-10-29 15:46:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,399
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20799089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: TheEnterpriseis forced to go on rations for a few weeks until they can resupply.  The hunger is less of a problem than the memories it brings back.





	Both Halves Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lah_mrh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lah_mrh/gifts).

“Repeat that, Mr. Spock?”

“The unstructured proteins used in our synthesizers have been corrupted, Captain.”

Ah—and that was where he’d lost Spock on their first time through this explanation. _Corruption _was the word for it, all right—and one that had too many memories around it, crowding him, elbowing more useful thoughts out of his head. Kirk made himself contain it this time.

“Engineering has been able to salvage a portion of our nutritional stores, and we can expect the regular yield from the hydroponic gardens. But I still believe we’ll need to begin rationing.”

“When can we expect to resupply?”

“In sixteen point four days, if we maintain a reasonable speed. Starbase Nine has already been informed to have stores on hand.”

“Sixteen days.” He was pacing, and he didn’t know how long he’d been doing it. At least they were in his quarters and not on the bridge: if he came a little unglued just now, Spock would be the only one to see. “I don’t like that, Spock, can we shave it down a little?”

“It’s possible. But greater speed carries a greater risk of being stranded short of our destination.”

“And we can’t have that.” He bit his lower lip. He’d done that a lot, once upon a time, once upon a handful of months that would probably be his constant companions over the next sixteen point four days. He’d bitten his lip until it had bled, he’d been that hungry. He’d wanted the taste of something, anything. Sam had spent three years’ worth of birthday money, later, buying him a pack of wintergreen chewing gum. Sugarless, of course, by then. Anything with calories had disappeared long before that. But it was something—taste, texture.

And now that teaberry-and-mint wintergreen taste made him sick to his stomach.

“Jim,” Spock said quietly, “the rations should not be severe.”

“But people will get hungry, I’d assume. That’s the general effect.” Wonderful, now he was getting snappish. And with Spock of all people. “Sorry. I’m just—well, I’m sure you can guess. Actually,” and the rush of putting this together gave him a bit of a lift, “I’d be willing to bet that’s why you gave me the news in private. You expected an emotional display. And given the hole I’m wearing in my floor, I doubt I’ve disappointed.”

“Under the circumstances, a lack of emotion would be… disconcerting. Quite possibly, for a human, ill-advised.”

Kirk offered him a weak smile. “That’s splendid ammunition you’ve given me for if we ever fight, Spock. All I’d have to do is tell Bones about you preaching the value of emotion.”

Spock raised one eyebrow. “I would deny it.”

“Sure, but we both know who he’d believe. Do you have the exact numbers on the rationing? --Ah, of course you do, thank you.” He skimmed through them as quickly as he could. He’d allow himself some carelessness on this; there was no way Spock’s calculations weren’t rock-solid and verified within an inch of their lives. He returned the PADD to Spock and met his eyes.

There was a kind of love he’d been in before, the love that usually preceded a kiss, and it had always come with some amount of _trompe-l’oeil_: you spruced yourself up, you tried to make a certain kind of impression. It was only later that you settled in and let them see that you weren’t so spick-and-span as you’d pretended—that, like a house, you had your mess and your ghosts. It wasn’t deliberate—or at least not entirely. It was just human nature.

And he couldn’t dispute—not to himself—that he loved Spock. But even though they’d never so much as kissed, Kirk had stopped pretending around him a long time ago. He didn’t know how or why.

But he could let Spock see whatever was on his face right now, and he wouldn’t worry about it.

“I agree with your assessment. We’ll put the rationing into place.”

Spock inclined his head. “I see no reason to delay the announcement until the start of your next shift.”

“Clever,” Kirk said. “You mean you’d make it for me, if that’s what I wanted.”

“Yes.”

He started to say to hell with it, he wasn’t incapable of pressing a button and delivering a bit of canned news that wouldn’t cause most of the crew to so much as blink, but then he thought about Kodos’s little speech in the plaza, the one he could still say from memory, along with a dozen speeches before it, all offering reassurance, all promising the greater good. His mouth was dry.

“I’d appreciate that,” he said quietly. “And thank you. Wait about fifteen minutes, if you could—I want to tell Riley. I think that would be best. And before we get to Starbase Nine, I want a report in my hand from your team telling me exactly what happened with the protein integrity and why it won’t happen again.”

“Already in progress, Captain.”

“I should’ve guessed.” He rolled his shoulders back, trying to work the tension out of them. “Have dinner with me tonight? We can listen to our stomachs growl together.”

Spock agreed—after assuring him that Vulcan stomachs would never be so undignified—and left him his fifteen minutes to hunt down Riley.

Kirk found him in one of the rec rooms, playing what seemed to be a cross between shuffleboard and curling; the temporary court was splashily colored, a bit like someone had upended paint cans everywhere.

_I’m getting old, _he thought with a trace of amusement, _if this is how I react to seeing a new game—if the first thing that crosses my mind is to worry about the floor.  
_

“Lieutenant Riley, if I could steal you for a moment—”

“Sure, Captain.” Riley passed his broom to a young Orion woman and bounded off the court; anybody would think he had rubber in his heels. He let Kirk lead him to one of the music rooms—closed off for acoustics, soundproofed for the noise and, handily enough, for captains needing to deliver bad news. By the time they’d settled in, Riley’s expression had changed, every trace of play wiped from his features. “What is it, sir?”

No point beating around the bush. “We’re going to have to go on reduced rations for a while—just a little over two weeks.”

Riley stiffened. So much for that bounce. When he spoke again, his voice was flat. “How bad is it, Captain?”

“Not too bad—you’ve got my word on that. Something’s just gone off with the protein sequences the synthesizer uses. Mr. Spock will work out what it is and it’ll never happen again, and in the meantime, we’ve got fresh fruits and vegetables and some of the grain supply, even a little of the synthesized stuff—though we’re going to be down to cubes there, probably. It won’t be any fun, but we’ll get through it.”

“Yes, sir,” Riley said. His face was still colorless.

Well, not like it had been the world’s most encouraging speech. He gripped Riley’s shoulder. “Look at me, Lieutenant. I’m not Kodos. There are some orders I’d never give, and that’s one of them.”

Riley managed a weak smile. “I know that, Captain. It’s not—what happened in the plaza that I’m worried about. It’s just—” He shrugged. “Knowing there’s a shortfall.”

“I know. I’m the same way. But we’ll get through it.” He let go and managed a smile of his own. “I could see about talking Lieutenant Uhura into organizing a song circle. Maybe we’re all owed some entertainment just now.”

That got him a much more genuine grin. “That’s how I know you’re hungry, sir—you’re starting to eat your words. You laid into me last year and said that if I so much as hummed in the shower, you’d come down on me like a hammer.”

“An emotional response, Mr. Riley. Two dozen rounds of ‘I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen’ would try any man’s patience.”

“Believe me, it’s nothing compared to what Uhura said about it. I almost locked myself into the brig for protection!”

He was hamming it up, but Kirk knew enough of that strategy to know that if Riley was doing right, he’d reap some of the benefits of it. A little bit of false cheer really could do wonders under the right circumstances. But he didn’t want to leave Riley thinking he had to stay chipper or die trying, so he added, “Come talk to me if it gets bad, Riley. Talk to somebody, anyway. There’s no point swimming around in your own head when there are people around to give you a hand out of it.”

Riley straightened up. The lively look he’d gotten was sticking around, at least. “Yes, sir.”

“And Riley—”

“Sir?”

“What the devil are the rules of that game out there?”

***

Kirk was on his own internal red alert all through his shift. Bad memories always made for good fun—all the tension of a firefight with none of the relief of escape or the satisfaction of victory. He was doing the exact circling-around he’d warned Riley about, but it wasn’t like airing his troubles to the whole bridge crew appealed to him. They’d be down on bended knee asking him to spare their ears. He could confide to Spock or Bones, but only off-shift. The work, the ship, _had _to take precedence.

Now if only something would do him a favor and happen—

But it didn’t. So he sat and thought.

It hadn’t just been the wintergreen gum. There’d been other things, too, that they’d eaten or chewed on to try to keep themselves from starving: grass, grubs, a kind of stinging cricket that left your tongue numb for an hour afterwards. The day before Kodos’s final message to the colony, they’d boiled their shoes, their belts, and anything else leather that they could find. He remembered finding one of his mother’s old winter gloves in a coat pocket. Remembered wishing he could have found its mate. He’d gotten down on the floor of the closet to look, his hands and knees in the dust—sick to his stomach from the goddamn lawn clippings and breathing in the smell of the coats, wool and old perfume. He’d never found that other glove.

Sam had always gone out of his way, after that, to only buy things that were synthetic. That boiled leather had stayed with him the way wintergreen had stayed with Kirk, the way their mother and father both got sick at the smell of freshly-cut grass.

But Kirk liked the Starfleet-issued boots, really. When he thought about it at all, it was almost comforting to know that there was something there to chew on in a pinch. A very old sailor’s trick.

Halfway during the shift, Bones came up to visit, and Kirk didn’t think he’d ever been so happy to see him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“To what do you think?” Bones said, crossing his arms. “It’s the rations, Jim.”

“I thought you’d be just as glad to see us all tightening our belts a little,” Kirk said blandly. “And see fruits and vegetables on everyone’s plate. You’re on me about my diet often enough.”

“Oh, cutting down on artificial protein gunk for a couple of weeks won’t kill anybody,” McCoy said, waving it off. He lowered his voice. “I mean I could guess that your psych profile just lit up like the Fourth of July.”

“Then you could also guess that there’d be a time and a place for talking about. And it wouldn’t be here, and it wouldn’t be now.”

“As a matter of fact, I guessed that too. But usually the only way of hooking you into sickbay is to ambush you. So what’ll it be, Captain? Appointment after your shift?”

“I was hoping you’d come up here for conversation.”

“And conversation’s something I’ll cheerfully provide, after I’ve satisfied my duty.”

Kirk sighed. “Yes, fine, Bones. After my dinner. You can hit me with all the questionnaires you want. I hope you’re showing this much interest in how Riley’s taking the news.”

“I’m keeping an eye on him. But I’m more worried about you.”

“More worried about me than a puppy-eyed lieutenant? Bones, you’re going to hurt my feelings.”

“Riley didn’t have to give the order,” Bones said quietly. “You did. I’m willing to bet that makes a hell of a difference, psychologically.”

Kirk looked at the view-screen. His hobby at the Academy—one that had earned him no end of ragging from Finnegan—had been memorizing the names other cultures had given to the stars. It was good to look out somewhere and always know where you were in four or five different languages. He couldn’t even order a cup of coffee in Andorian, but he knew their constellations by heart. Right now, the _Enterprise _was bearing steadily towards the Army in Flight.

“Spock gave the order,” Kirk said.

“And I’m a monkey’s uncle. He came to you about it first. You had to sign off on it, and for my money, that’s close enough.” His eyes fixed on Kirk’s, kind but missing nothing. Kirk had never had any trouble picturing Bones cutting up cadavers—he did a good job getting to the heart of a thing. They’d been keeping their voices down anyway—this wasn’t a conversation the rest of the bridge ever needed to hear—but now Bones’s voice was soft as well as low. “But all that can wait until I’ve put a stiff, well-earned drink in your hand. I’m getting ahead of myself.”

Kirk squeezed his arm. He had trouble, suddenly, thinking of anything to say.

Bones picked up on that. He said, “You know, what I’d prescribe for you right now is a joke that’s been going around sickbay lately. Seems it’s banned on Olin II as the only known obscenity, but for the life of us, we can’t figure out why.”

His chuckle was mostly just from relief. “All right, Bones, lay it on me.”

***

“I do not understand what about this is meant to be humorous,” Spock said.

Kirk waved that off. “Nobody does, Spock. But we’re all used to humor not translating across cultures. The point is, we have four hundred and twenty-two people on this ship, and apparently none of us can figure out what’s supposed to be so off-color here. Taboos are at least a little more universal than jokes, but—” He shrugged. “Nothing.”

Spock frowned slightly. “Repeat it, please, Captain.”

Kirk leaned forward, bracing his elbows against the table. “It goes like this: imagine yourself walking into a shop and buying a hat. You find one with a wide brim that looks good on you, but it seems a little overpriced. You can’t make up your mind what to do, but then the store owner tells you the tag’s a mistake. The hat fits right into your budget, neat as can be, so you buy it.” He spread out his hands. “And that’s all there is to it.”

“And the Olinians find this highly offensive?”

“They _banned _it.”

Spock raised one eyebrow. “Fascinating.”

“Yes, Bones said you’d say that.”

Spock’s frown deepened by just a millimeter and Kirk grinned at him, delighted by it.

“You know,” he said, digging a fork into his salad, “I’ve got you and Bones both walking on eggshells around me, but right now, I’d say I feel as good as ever. You’re oil on troubled waters, Mr. Spock.”

“I’m glad to hear that, Captain,” Spock said, without even a word about how he was certainly neither oily nor treading on any kind of egg. There was a beguiling warmth to his face. Kirk had heard that one of the factors that kept human-Vulcan relationships rare was the coloring differences you got from copper-based blood vs. iron-based; humans looked downright unwashed to Vulcans, like they were all accented with the dust of Vulcan’s red clay, and Vulcans looked sickly and sallow to humans. He’d heard that, but he still couldn’t believe it. Not the last part, anyway. Look at Spock and see anything but beauty?

Of course, if he looked too long, he’d give the game away. He couldn’t be sure Spock felt the same about him, and risking what they had—it would be disastrous.

He cast his eyes down at the tabletop, still smiling, and reached the salt shaker. “Any progress on figuring out what fouled up our protein stores?”

“The matter is still under exploration, but I believe the tests currently running may provide the answer.”

“I’m just hoping it’s preventable—easily preventable, ideally—and not attributable to crew error.”

Spock raised an eyebrow. “Crew error would seem a likely answer, however, for a sudden failing of a usually reliable system.”

“Yes, but I don’t want to have to make a disciplinary matter of it.” Not when he wasn't sure he could be reasonable. He went for another bite and heard the hard clink of the tines of his fork stabbing down against an empty plate.

So much for his good mood. This dinner had gone all too quickly. Spock was right, these weren’t starvation rations by a long shot, but he wasn’t used to finishing a meal still hungry.

Not in a long time, anyway. He wasn’t sure he wanted to get used to it again.

“Jim?”

“Sorry.” He put his fork down. “My mind’s wandering. I’m supposed to go and talk with Bones after this, and—maybe it’s a good idea.” He rubbed his forehead—somehow it was easier to treat all this like it was a headache, just a pill and a dark room away from being cured. “Tell me the truth, Spock. Do I need to step down until all this is over?”

Spock shook his head. “Distraction is not dereliction, not unless or until the ship is in crisis. I've no doubt that if trouble came, you would meet it with your customary clarity.”

He had no idea whether he ought to press that opinion further—make sure it had the ring of truth and not just of friendship—but he couldn’t bring himself to do it now. There was a kind of lump in his throat. He nodded. “Thank you, Spock.” He glanced at Spock’s plate, which was now as clean as his own. “Are you still hungry?”

“Yes. But I am confident the problem will abate.”

“Once you get used to it?”

Spock inclined his head.

He was being cautious now, probably, wary of stepping on Kirk’s toes. Did he really look so bad right now that even Spock felt he had to be careful around him?

That decided it. He stood up. “If I could steal you for a minute before I go let Bones poke and prod me—”

“Illogical, Jim,” Spock said, standing too. “You cannot steal what is freely given.”

He wondered how lovestruck he’d have to be to read volumes into that particular use of _Jim _rather than _Captain_. Maybe he was better off as he was, only _wanting _to read volumes there, but still mostly able to stop himself.

Spock could ding him for that _mostly_, and he’d deserve it: _mostly _covered too wide a range.

It was a short walk from the mess hall to his quarters, not enough to really give him time to think better of what he was doing. He found the blue-and-white tin he’d been thinking of and presented it to Spock.

Spock removed the lid. Up went the eyebrow, as reliable as clockwork. “Cookies, Captain?”

“Snickerdoodles, handmade by Mom and Peter. I’ve heard Peter once swapped out the sugar for salt, so eat at your own risk, but they should at least be fresh—the tin has preservation strips fitted into it.”

“I am certain these were intended for you.”

“I was always taught to share with friends.”

“Jim.” Spock set the tin down on Kirk’s desk, very gently, like it was precious to him. “This is not necessary.”

“No, it’s dessert.” He ignored the prickle of sweat near his hairline, the panicky way his body tried to tell him that there were unbelievably high stakes here, that Spock could starve if he didn’t let Kirk help him. “There aren’t enough of them for me to pass them out to the crew, not unless everyone would be satisfied with crumbs, so it doesn’t matter. Have a couple.”

He felt a wave of relief as Spock did indeed take a cookie.

“She was fanatical about sending care packages when I was at the Academy,” Kirk said. “Almost every week. Sam got the same, when he was in college, but I got the brunt of it, really.”

“Because you were the youngest?”

Kirk smiled. He was surprised by how easy it was. “Because I was the one who’d gotten called unfit.”

Spock froze. His hand tightened, making the cookie break apart slightly, crumbling against his fingers and leaving them sandy with sugar and cinnamon; it was the kind of thing Kirk had no doubt Spock would have noticed right away, under ordinary circumstances. But not now. He looked—blindsided.

“You must have known that,” Kirk said, unsure of what the surprise here had been. “You knew I was one of the surviving witnesses. Logically—”

“I worked from what appears to have been a false premise—that the need for you to live would have been as obvious to Kodos as it is to me.”

He felt something dissolve inside him. What had stayed with him all these years hadn’t even been the hunger as much as it had been what he’d done because of it—that he’d let it make him desperate, so desperate Sam had needed to try to rescue him from himself, and even sloppy, never coming up with that second glove. He would have said before today that he’d never thought one way or the other about what list Kodos had marked his name on. All that mattered about it was that it meant he’d been there in the plaza, right there as it was happening—helpless and drowning in blood.

But whatever the real hurt was, Spock’s words helped.

“Thank you, Spock,” he said softly. “But all in all, it was probably for the best. I think I had an easier time being picked to die than Sam did being picked to live. By now, I understand why. You’d feel the same way if it had been you.”

Spock considered this for a moment and then took a bite of his cookie. “No substitution of salt for sugar appears to have been made.”

“Good, then?”

“Palatable,” Spock said.

Kirk laughed. “I’ll put that in my thank you card. I’m sure every mother appreciates being thanked for her very ‘palatable’ cookies.” He settled the tin back down on his desk and replaced the lid. “All right, I’ll give you a break from human emotion for a while. I did promise Bones I’d drop by.”

He half-turned to go, but Spock put a hand on his arm. It jarred him—even with all their familiarity, even after years of friendship, it wasn’t like Spock to be the one to initiate physical contact.

Spock said, “I do not find your emotions distressing.”

“I’m not saying you’d ban them outright, like the Olinians with their hat joke, but I know—”

“I would regret,” Spock said, with a faint greenish flush in his cheeks, “any circumstances that would make you conceal your feelings from me.”

He didn’t know if it was the blush that made that feel momentous or what he knew of Vulcans or just something between them, between Spock’s hand and his arm, something like electricity in a closed circuit.

When he spoke, he sounded a little hoarse. “Crumbs, Mr. Spock.”

Spock looked down at his own hand on Kirk's arm and seemed to finally register the little crumbled pieces of cookie he'd left against Kirk's gold tunic. He let go. "I apologize," he said, but for him to be sorry was the last thing Kirk wanted.

"No, it's nothing." His heart in his throat, he slid his hand against Spock's, curling his first two fingers slightly and feeling Spock curl his own in response; the brush became a caress, became a Vulcan kiss. "Is this right?"

Spock's thumb grazed his knuckles. "If I am correct about your intentions, it is--extremely right."

He almost laughed. "You should know my intentions better than anyone."

"Apparently I have not. But I begin to suspect they are, and have been, in accord with my own."

Never mind his hunger; this was the only satisfaction he needed. "I'd like to hear more about your intentions. At some length."

He relished the hint of amusement—of full-on _teasing_—that crept into Spock’s eyes then, a gem-bright kind of shine. “It is unfortunate you will not have more time to sample them, then. As you said, you must keep your promise to Dr. McCoy. My sensibilities will not, however, be injured if you should decide to bring him a cookie.”

Even that—even the reminder that he was due to go bare his soul—couldn’t entirely dampen the moment. “Just as long as we do have time.”

Spock said quietly, “All I have to give.”

His heart tightened. “Yes. All of mine too.”

He could still taste a lingering sweetness, like he'd kissed Spock by human traditions and not just Vulcan ones. He wasn’t hungry anymore. And he wasn’t helpless, either—for the first time since Spock had given him the news, he knew, down to his very bones, that they would all get through this.

Right now the universe felt very bright, full of stars he knew by half-a-dozen names.

He took the tin of cookies with him and passed them out to whatever crew he met going down the hall. By the time he reached sickbay, people were going into their quarters and digging up old Valentine’s chocolates and muscle-building protein bars and jars of hot peppers—anything they happened to have privately on hand. Every common area of the ship was becoming a bustling pantry of free food, like a kind of wry, ill-assorted banquet celebrating that if they were in this, they were at least all in it together.


End file.
